WHEN IT COMES TO CHOOSING A GOOD PHONICS PROGRAMME, THRASS SCORES 10 OUT OF 10
In order to help schools select a high quality phonics programme, the British Government has just published its criteria for a good programme and THRASS synthetic phonics scores full marks against all those criteria.
On 7 September Secretary of State for Education, Alan Johnson, announced measures to further improve numeracy and literacy standards in primary schools across England. As part of this, teachers will be given new guidance to make phonics their prime approach to early reading in the renewed 'Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics', which will incorporate the recommendations of the Rose Review of the Teaching of Early Reading that 'high quality phonic work' is the best means for teaching beginner readers how to read and spell. 
The criteria for a good phonics programme will be set out in Annex A to the renewed Framework and THRASS synthetic phonics meets every single one:
* THRASS is fully compatible with a broad and rich curriculum and can easily be integrated into a whole range of subjects across the curriculum so that children learn much more quickly.
* THRASS is systematic, with a clearly defined and structured progression for learning all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences through its 10 'Features', four 'Phases' and 10 'Stages'.
* THRASS is designed to be delivered in discrete daily sessions at a brisk pace well matched to children's developing abilities. By following the scheme of work set out in the latest THRASS publication, 'THRASS 15 Minutes a Day x 2', which is based on the essential teaching guide 'TEACHING THRASS', all the material required to fully implement and assess the 10 stages of the THRASS programme will be covered in four years. However, this scheme of work has also been designed to offer maximum flexibility and can easily be adapted to suit the actual number of weeks/terms in any school year.
* THRASS is underpinned by a synthetic approach to blending phonemes in order all through a word to read it, and segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell them.
* THRASS makes clear that blending and segmenting are reversible processes.
* THRASS is a multi-sensory programme based on developing visual, auditory and kinesthetic skills in learners and 'Teaching THRASS' explains how all the THRASS multi-sensory resources (audio, magnetic, printed, software and video) are used, with children encouraged to participate in miming, story-telling, drama, speaking, listening, handwriting, singing and dancing.
* THRASS makes clear the importance of speaking and listening as the foundation for embarking on a systematic phonics programme and for acquiring the skills of reading and writing.
* THRASS offers clear guidance on how to assess progress and use this to inform the next steps of learning.
* THRASS is widely used internationally for teaching learners of all ages and abilities but has been particularly successful for teaching children with special educational needs. The 'THRASS Phoneme Machine', a groundbreaking computer programme that uses the International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation system and moving human lips to demonstrate the pronunciation of hundreds of words frequently found in children's reading books, is particularly suited to teaching those with speech or hearing difficulties or dyslexia.
However, a serious omission from the published criteria is that lower case and capital letters should be identified by name. THRASS delivers an additional benefit in that by naming letters, it is able to introduce capital letters from the earliest stages of learning.
But the THRASS synthetic phonics programme also offers much more. It provides an extensive picture-based training website for schools and parents (www.thrass.co.uk) with easy access to a wide range of resources and support materials and extensive evidence of the widespread success of THRASS. Teachers, parents, educational psychologists and speech and language therapists in thousands of schools in the UK, Europe and Africa use THRASS and the website includes a number of demonstration lessons and shows THRASS being used very successfully in a wide range of schools: the Kwena Basin Farm schools in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa where the children live in extremely difficult surroundings but where everyone has been amazed at their rate of progress and their unbelievable desire to learn; St Peter's Preparatory School in Johannesburg, where within a year THRASS, combined with paired reading, had, contrary to the current trend among boys in UK schools, produced some stunning results with a 60 percent increase in boys' spelling ages and a considerable increase in their reading ages; brand new schools like Oxley Park Primary School, Milton Keynes and also challenging inner city schools like Windsor Clive Infants School, Cardiff, both of which are Centres of Excellence for teaching THRASS. More recently, Sunderland City Council has provided evidence of the impact of THRASS for teaching primary pupils for whom English is a second language or who have special educational needs: for every week on the programme, the pupils made nearly six weeks improvement in reading.

In order to help them implement the new guidance in the renewed 'Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics', every primary school in England is being given additional funding to support up to 14 days training. THRASS UK runs highly acclaimed accredited training courses for teachers, assistants and parents in the UK, Europe, West and Southern Africa. Hundreds of courses have now been run and thousands of extremely positive evaluations received. All the details can be seen at www.thrass.co.uk/courses.htm.

And there are reports of still more plans for the large-scale introduction of THRASS. In Mauritius discussions are currently taking place about the implementation of THRASS in a number of government and private primary schools from January 2007. And in South Africa, the Crawford collection of schools that constitutes the largest single private school organisation in South Africa, will all begin implementing THRASS from January 2007. Alan Davies, Executive Director of THRASS UK, will be training the first wave of Crawford teachers in November and the initiative is expected to have a big impact on the independent sector in many countries.
 
In addition, the Department for Education and Skills is now looking to determine the criteria for and establish a new independent QA system to assess commercial phonics programmes. It has invited THRASS UK to discuss with it the development and operation of those criteria and THRASS UK is looking forward to doing so. 

 
Issued by: THRASS UK News Media Centre www.thrass.co.uk/nm.htm

Mike Meade, Media Director, +44 1829 741413 Mob: 07970 151 738 mikemeade@thrass.co.uk

Chris Griffiths, International Development, +30 266 203 1207 chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk